On the 25th
April 1915 allied troops landed at Gallipoli peninsular. The aim was
to seize Constantinople, link up with the Russians, and in the words
of the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, "attack
the soft underbelly of the central powers", meaning Germany, Austria
and Turkey.
To support
the invasion the Royal Navy sought to attack the Turkish line of supply
across the Sea of Marmara. But to get to Marmara, warships had to run
the gauntlet of the Dardanelles straits. The narrow straits were defended
by minefields and heavy guns on both shores. It had proved to be an
impossible task for the Royal Navy's battleships.......but could a
submarine get through.
On the 19th
of May in the dead of night, HM submarine E11 slipped quietly out of
her base on the island of Imbrues. On the conning tower, her captain
Lieutenant Commander Martin Nasmith listened to the beat of the boat's
diesel engines. soon they would see the sweep of the searchlights guarding
the entrance to the straits. For Nasmith and his crew the great adventure
had begun. E11's three patrols in Marmara would make her the most celebrated
submarine in the Royal Navy and would win her captain the Victoria
Cross.
His Majesty's
submarine E11 was 181 feet long and weighed 807 tons. She could make
15 knots on the surface and 9 knots underwater. She could dive safely
to 200 feet and stay under for up to 20 hours. Navigation was by compass
and chart. They had no radar or sonar and only a weak transmitter to
send morse code messages back to base. The crew totalled thirty, three
officers and twenty-seven ratings. The officers shared two bunks and
the crew slept on the deck. They used buckets for washing themselves
and shared two toilets. They had a small kitchen with an electric cooker.
Privacy, such as it was, was provided by a few curtains.

Brown and Huges on the Conning Tower
At 32 years, Lt. Commander
Nasmith was a veteran submariner, his crew reckoned he had the
best periscope eye
in the "trade" (the nickname of the early submarine service).
The Dardanelles patrols would demonstrate not only Nasmith's courage
but also his talent for innovation and resourcefulness. Nasmith
expected a lot of his crew but also himself. After a failed attack
on a German
battleship in 1914 he swore not to drink or smoke again until his
first hit. Months later in Marmara, when Nasmith sent his first
Turkish ship
to the bottom, his crew presented Nasmith with beer and cigars.
Lieutenant Guy D'Oyly Hughes, as second in command was responsible
for ensuring
the smooth running of ever aspect of the boat. At 29 years D'Oyly
Hughes shared his Captain's adventurous spirit. Lieutenant Robert
Brown was
the Navigating Officer. Brown was a reservist from the Merchant
Navy. Brown had famously been born on a sailing ship rounding Cape
Horn.
Popular with the crew Brown had a wry sense of humour evident in
his patrol reports.
"Run Amuck
In Marmara"

E11 Passes HMS Grampus to the chears
of the Crew
To avoid the shore guns and minefields
E11 dived to 80ft just as dawn broke on 20th May. the plan was to dive
under the deadly minefields.
"Suddenly there was a metal clang
forward. They listened in dead silence as a mooring wire scraped along
the outside of the hull..... D'Oyly put his empty cocoa cup down on
the wardroom table, very gently, as if the slightest additional vibration
might explode the mine. The wire seemed to be caught up for an instant
on one of the propeller guards and then was thrown clear".
From "Dardanelles Patrol"
E11 scraped herself past several more
mine before getting clear of the field. By 9.30pm the long dive was
nearly over. E11 had been down for 17 hours - oxygen levels were low
and circulation fans were essential to stop the crew succumbing to
carbon dioxide poisoning

Damage to E11's conning tower
Everything was foul:
"Mingling with
the all pervading smell of oil there was a sour smell from the
batteries and un-emptied
sanitary buckets standing in rows behind the engines.....Grey mist
rose from the bilges darkening the interior of the boat like London
fog
From "Dardanelles Patrol"
Commodore Keys had told
Nasmith to "go
and run amuck in Marmara" and so he did. Fro the next three weeks
E11 would scour the Marmara torpedoing large vessels and scuttling
smaller craft. On the 25th May Nasmith took E11 into Constantinople
harbour, and sank a large troop transport at her moorings. E11 was
the first hostile warship to enter the harbour in 500 years! Apart
from the practical value of disrupting supplies to the Turkish battle
front, the daring attack had great propaganda value. During each of
these three patrols Nasmith was innovative in so many ways. He successfully
worked out how to suspend the submarine between layers of fresh and
salt water. This meant he could hide for long periods under water without
having to keep moving, his crew could rest and his batteries did not
get exhausted. On the first patrol he hid the submarine for several
hours behind a captured dhow. Later he ordered torpedoes to be set
to float so that if he missed he might recover the "fish" to
use again. Nasmith then personally dived into the water to retrieve
and disarm the first torpedo recovered.
E11 Lashed to the side of a Turkish
Dhow
The Return Journey

E11 Bridge
E11 had been on patrol for nearly three
weeks when she again dived into the straits for the return journey,
Nasmith feared the passage would be even more dangerous than the run
up, the Turks would be looking for the British submarine that had done
so much damage. Approximately an hour and a half after diving they
heard a scrape against the hull and then the submarine started to behave
strangely. Nasmith took her up 20ft and raised the periscope.
"the men were silent
looking at him wondering what had happened....he couldn't possibly
tell them what
met his horrified gaze"
From "Dardanelles Patrol"
E11 had snagged a mine on her forward
hydroplane and was dragging it along through the water. Nasmith said
nothing to the crew and ordered E11 deeper. He went up in the conning
tower and peered out through the tiny scuttles (windows).
"The water cleared
as the mine was pulled under. It surged from side to side and swung
down towards the
conning tower. It was only ten feet away from the scuttle through
which he was looking. He counted six horns sticking out of it"
From "Dardanelles Patrol"
The submarine dragged its lethal attachment
right through the minefield. When Nasmith revealed their predicament
to his men nearly two hours later it was to give a series of swift
orders designed to dislodge the mine. Nasmith ordered full-a-stern,
the mine and its cable slipped of the bows and plunged away beneath
them. Minutes later E11's glistening hull surfaced into the sunshine
of Cape Helles.
Nasmith crowded his men onto E11's conning
tower to greet their escorting destroyer.
"cheers were still echoing of the
cliffs at Helles, for it had spread like wild fire in the British lines
about the fabulous E11 whose exploits had been read to troops in daily
bulletins, had returned safely".
From "Dardanelles Patrol
Epilogue"


The Turkish Steamship
SS Bospherous sinking
The Campaign
The Gallipoli Campaign
ended in failure. Allied troops had completely withdrawn by January
1916 having suffered
over 30,000 casualties. The Turks had held the line but at a terrible
cost with up to 200,000 casualties. The Royal Navy's inability
to force the Dardanelles Straits with its battleships was clearly one
of the
causes of the expeditions failure. However, for the crew of E11
and
the other British and Allied submarines who took their boats up
the deadly straits of the Dardanelles had proved to be their finest
hour.
Their teamwork, skill and daring that were the hallmark of the "Trade",
demonstrated that the German U-boats were not alone in having the
power to terrorise the seas and the potential to strangle supply
lines.
Lieutenant Commander Martin Nasmith

Lt Commander Nasmith in front of the
conning tower
Promotion followed Nasmith's dramatic
success in the Dardanelles. After the war he moved on to bigger things
Commanding the 'Dreadnought' battleship HMS Iron Duke. In the intermediate
war years he had important staff posts including Captain of the Royal
College at Dartmouth, where he had the distinction of presenting his
own son with the best cadet award. Most significantly he became the
first submariner to reach the position of Rear Admiral responsible
for submarines. In 1932 he received a knighthood and in World War II
as Admiral Sir Martin Dunbar Nasmith he served as Commander-in-chief
Western approaches. Thus the Submarine 'ace' of the Great War was charged
with defeating the U-boat menace in the Atlantic.

Commander Nasmith

Read Admiral Dunbar-Nasmith (son
of Martin Nasmith) & E11 Veterans, at the presentation of the
ship's bell to HMS Dolphin
HM Submarine E11
E11 was to return to Marmara for two more
highly successful patrols. Nasmith finally sunk the Turkish battleship
Hairedin Barabaross that had twice eluded him. Guy D'Oyly Hughes built
another raft on the second patrol, carried a hair raising attack on
the Baghdad railway. Over the course of the three patrols, May to December
1915, E11 destroyed 86 ships (67,302 tons in total). For E11's historic
attack on Constantinople harbour Nasmith received the Victoria Cross
and the entire crew the Distinguished Service Medal. After the British
evacuation from the Gallipoli peninsular, E11 was engaged on Aegean
patrols and later on the North African trade routes. One of her last
duties was to sail to Sevastapol (in the Crimea) to accept U-boat surrenders.
The boat survived the war and was eventually paid off in Malta in 1919.